President Barack Obama: A Middle East legacy of death and destruction

WASHINGTON: From the crescent of Syria to the plains of Libya, to the former Yazidi homelands of Iraq and the streets of Donetsk, former U.S. President Barack Obama left in his wake a legacy of death, misery and destruction. The millions that have been killed throughout the Middle East. The calamity of the migration crisis. The destruction of heritage European cities overrun by refugees, many bringing crime, rape, murder and social instability to once peaceful enclaves (Refugee crisis: Berlin so swamped by migrants that city is in ruins)

During the Arab Spring Obama’s disastrous backing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt led to chaos, death, the rise of Al Qaeda in the Sinai, social instability and the weakening of a crucial ally.

Then President Obama stood idly by as Syria imploded, before recklessly arming Islamic and Al Qaeda factions in increasingly pointless covert operations. Under Obama, American power was fecklessly hamstrung while Assad gassed his own people.

‘Obama and then Secretary of State Clinton watched from afar, probably from a live drone feed, as four Americans, Ambassador Chris Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA operatives, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs, died in the 2012 Benghazi attack.

He did nothing when Baghdadi destroyed Palmyra, when ISIS ravaged Raqua and when they butchered and crucified Catholic priests. When Baghdadi proclaimed his Caliphate in Mosul it was also a proclamation of American weakness and defeat.

In the summer of 2014, ISIS launched its caliphate from Mosul by marking Christian homes with the red letter “N,” for “Nazarene,” before confiscating them and exiling their owners. Since then, it has pursued Christians and the other minorities with a systematic intensity intended to delete every trace of their ancient presence. Solely for their religion, Christians and Yazidis have been beheaded, enslaved, abducted and sold, forcibly converted to Islam, and stripped of all their property. Their houses of worship and their cultural artifacts have been expropriated or demolished, including the fifth-century monastery in Qaraytain and Nineveh’s fourth-century Mar Behnam monastery.

Armed factions of Al Nusra front – armed via covert American action – beheaded the Christian Abbot of one of the last Aramaic monasteries in Syria. Aramaic is the language actually spoken by Jesus.

The was the same Putin who was later so emboldened by American weakness that he intervened openly in Syria with the Russian Air Force. It was Putin who turned the tide of war in Syria, with his Iranian and Hezbollah allies, not Barack Obama.

It was Obama’s vacillation and weakness that guaranteed Assad’s victory.

Barack Obama: Weakness turns to Resolve under Trump

It was a lack of ability to follow thru on genuine policies of engagement through American strength and resolve. It was a constant stream of boiler plate rhetoric and little or no actual substantive follow thru.

Look at the attitude of our closest allies in the region. The alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. You can practically hear the sigh of relief. Newly certain American resolve stiffens the spines of all of them and scares the crap out of the Iranians. It should.

Barack Obama: The Migration crisis and the destruction of Libya

It was President Barack Obama who opened the floodgates for millions of refugees to destabilize Europe. Through Libya and Mali, from Iraq and Syria, flooding Turkey. Decimating the cultural fabric of Europe, traumatizing Greece, overwhelming Italy.

It was Obama who, after destroying Libya, bought up arms from Al Qaeda and extremist factions in Libya to ship them to Al Qaeda and extremist factions in Syria. That’s what Benghazi was all about.

The USA was buying up arms from nasty people, Al Qaeda factions, we had armed to overthrow Quadaffi. We were shipping those arms to Al Qaeda factions in Syria. That was why there was a CIA station there.

That’s why Ambassador Hill was there.

Obama, Brennan, Clinton, Rice, Rhodes: Blood on their hands

A shameful part of President Barack Obama’s legacy of death is the senseless butchering of Ambassador Hill and three other brave American’s, the failure to secure their positions, the failure to rescue them, and the endless torrent of lies that came out afterward.

Endless, open lies from Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton about a video. Obfuscation from the White House in the middle of an election. Sheeplike acceptance from an unskeptical media.

The blood of those men are on Obama and Secretary Clinton’s hands. As is the blood of millions. Throughout the region. On John Brennan, and Susan Rice, and Ben Rhodes, and Samantha Powers, and Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry.

Barack Obama: Dismembering Ukraine thru miscalculation and weakness

Ukraine, where CIA and American intelligence were heavily involved in the Maidon demonstrations that led to the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovich. It was the violation of the Minsk agreements we had just signed, and the attempted murder of Yanukovich, and the severe decrees of the new Ukrainian government, that prompted Putin’s next moves. We are not innocent parties there.

The first move of the new government was to revoke the citizenship and pensions of Russian speakers in Ukraine. This fomented the rebellion in the heavily Russian eastern provinces. A subsequent series of blundering, corrupt kleptocrats running Ukraine ever since have hardly justified the promise of the revolution.

Barack Obama and the Ukrainian back-story

Is Putin interfering in Ukraine. You bet he is. It’s on their border. The largest Russian Naval base in the world is in Crimea at Sebastapol. Oh and here’s a dirty little secret. Crimea was given to Ukraine by Kruschev in 1954, long after WWII. Ukraine is to Russia what Texas is to America. There are longstanding cultural ties and now conflicts. Attempts at destabilizing Ukraine by Obama were seen by Putin as the first step toward destabilizing Russia and he lashed back. (Obama’s Ukraine policy in shambles – Politico)

But what was Obama’s response?

Talk and sanctions. Weakness. Bluster. Denial of responsibility. More weakness. Refusing to provide defensive anti-tank weapons to Kiev. The same weapons that Trump has just delivered.

There was a dangerous overreaching, followed by an incoherent vacillating response. No wonder Putin was emboldened. No one was ever threatened by Barack Obama or took his threats seriously. He exuded uncertainty and weakness.

Barack Obama: How do you sleep at night?

Obama’s weakness in response to Iranian moves in Syria with Hezbollah was a weakness that Putin used in Syria to reinsert Russia back into the Middle East.

We know he has no shame. But he is responsible for the deaths, the countries destroyed, for the lies and coverups, and the sad unfortunate results of feckless weak Obama policies. Policies that appeased Iran, and emboldened Russia. Policies that made America weaker and brought chaos to the globe.

Responsibility for the millions swept up in a migration crisis caused by the very conflicts he facilitated and created. I don’t know how he can sleep at night. I honestly don’t know how he can live with himself.

Which leads me to the question, exactly what the hell is he smiling about?

LJ Keith is a non-partisan commentator taking aim at all aspects of governmental domestic and foreign policy and the American socio-political landscape with an eye toward examining the functional realities of the modern age, how they can be understood, and what context to view the changing face of life in America and its place in the world at large.